September 29th, 2003

ANGRY BASKETBALL JOCKS, PIZZA MAKING LEPRECHAUNS, DIRTY BRITISH UNCLES AND VINCENT PRICE:  REMEMBERING THE BEST AND THE WORST OF  VINTAGE ONTARIO KIDS SHOWS

The other day I was flooded with a strange and obscure memory.

A lone man in a yellow t-shirt stands alone on a basketball court. He holds a basketball covered in silver spray paint. He bounces it twice and throws it at the hoop making the net swish as the ball goes through. Suddenly five small children in the same yellow shirts come running up to the tall blonde haired man.

"Hi Ron," they all yell enthusiastically.

"Hi kids," the man says, sounding rather bored to tell you the truth.

"What are we gonna do today?" the kids scream in unison.

"Something very special," the man replies. He doesn't sound at all convincing.

"Hooray!" the kids yell and they all run off the court together.

This was the opening of the early eighties kids show "The Silver Basketball". What? You never heard of it? Well that's not surprising. "The Silver Basketball" was filmed in the Peterborough area and aired on CHEX TV in the early 1980's. It starred Ron Oliver, who went on to do the short lived, but very funny YTV program "Oliver's Twist", and featured segments on crafts, safety tips, stories, music, puppets, and other fun stuff. Ron Oliver kind of drifted through the show shooting death looks at the camera and hating every minute as if he was in show business purgatory. However, for some reason I, like most kids in Peterborough, watched it anyway. In fact, years later I remember meeting some people who, when they were kids, wore the yellow t-shirts. I remember them saying that Ron was actually kind of a dick.

The late seventies and early eighties was a really unique time in Ontario for original children's programming. It seemed that every little television station in Ontario was producing its own show for little kids. Doing a Google search on many of them I was surprised to see that little to no information is available on the majority of these shows - as if they never existed. However, I am sure that there are people all over Ontario who remember watching these cheaply made shows. They were never that great, but during an age where you only had about twenty channels to choose from and there wasn't such thing as a twenty four hour cartoon network, these shows all had a captive audience, and nothing as simple or as cheap exists these days.

Now, to be concise, I am not talking about the shows that appeared on the CBC (Friendly Giant, Mr. Dressup) or TV Ontario (Polka Dot Door, Readalong, Cucumber). Those shows were "big time" on the grand scale of things. There is a lot of information on those shows. I am talking about shows like "Harrigan the Leprechaun" from CKWS out of Kingston.

Who's "Harrigan the Leprechaun"? Harrigan the Leprechaun, I believe, actually ran quite a long life. Played by Irish actor Bill Daley, Harrigan was a dancing and singing leprechaun. There were stories and puppets and you could send in your drawings and they'd be shown on the gallery while Harrigan and his friends would comment on how good they were. However, the real shtick was that Harrigan could shrink and turn large again by walking in front of a blue screen with children's drawings displayed on it. Wow! Those were pretty nifty special effects for a crappy little Ontario station. When I was in university I met a girl who claimed that Daley now owned a pizza place in Kingston and you could get a free slice if you sang the theme ("H A Double R I G A N spells HARRIGAN).  Was she telling the truth? Perhaps we'll never know.

Then there was the long running "Uncle Bobby Show" from CFTO in Toronto. Uncle Bobby, which was renamed "Kids Korner" in the eighties, aired right after the Flintstones for a number of decades during lunch hour. "Uncle" Bobby Ash was an old British guy with very little pizzazz. In fact, he spoke rather fast like a sales man and usually seemed rather disinterested in what was going on. However, he guided you through different segments with far more charismatic and warmer guests with more of the same - art, crafts, music and games. However, the highlight of the show was the Bimbo the Birthday Clown segment. They carted out this giant plywood clown that had a mouth that moved to a song that went "Bimbo, Bimbo, something something Birthday show..." ect. Anyhow, then these puppets, made out of macramé, obviously made by old grannies and  sold at flea markets and church bazaars, dropped from the ceiling and they sang Happy Birthday and the wife and husband puppet would kiss. Then Uncle Bobby and his guest would read all the birthdays from an envelope of names that came out of the clown’s pocket, which parents would mail into the show. Believe me, this whole scenario sounded more exciting than it was. There was also an overweight cop from the Toronto Police Force named Big John who always had Uncle Bobby singing the old country song as he introduced him. Big John sat on a throne and at the end of the show he would tell a safety tip. The show lasted for a long time, but somewhere it kind of disappeared. I heard lots of different stories about whatever happened to Uncle Bobby. I heard he was deported and I heard he was nabbed for pedophilia - but both are untrue.  Bobby Ash, now approaching his 80's, still lives in Toronto. Once somebody told me they saw him in Toronto and asked for an autograph and he told them to fuck off, which I probably do believe a lot more.

CFTO also had the popular kiddie game show "Just Like Mom" hosted by Blue Jay Baseball commentator Fergie Oliver and his wife Catherine. The premise was that kids and their moms went on the show and were asked a series of questions that they had to predict the other would answer - much like the Newlywed game without questions about "Whoopee". Then the kids went into the kitchen to bake something (cookies, cakes ect.) and they had a minute to dump as many items into the mixing bowl as possible. There was everything you could think of from chocolate chips to bottles of Pepsi to bottles of ketchup to use. Then the mothers had to taste the contraptions baked and guess which ones their kid made. The winner would spin a prize wheel for a prize - and the biggest prize was a trip for four to Disney World. I think every kid I knew wanted to get on that show and god knows I had a sure fire way to win. I always told my mom that if we went on I would dump the whole bottle of ketchup in the batter and she could identify my cookie that way. Genius! Of course, we never went on.

Further down the line, to the Niagara region, was the CHCH that also had some rather successful long running children's programs. The longest was "Tiny Talent Time" hosted by Bill Lawrence which premiered in the late 1950s and ran until the beginning of the 1990s!  Filmed in Hamilton, Bill Lawrence introduced pint sized tap dancers, accordionists, ventriloquists, and any other kid that they could get to come on. I remember having a secret desire to get on the show, but I didn't have any real talent to showcase. Bill would ask the kids questions like, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" and, "If I could snap my fingers what would you wish for?” What was always entertaining was when you had a group of kids and Bill Lawrence would ask the first kid what she wanted to be when she grew up and she'd say a nurse or something, and then right down the line all the other awestruck little lemmings would repeat the same answer due to the fact that they were too much in shock to think up a different answer. It most always happened. Then, after the little interviews he'd let the kids go at their act. The only reason the show lasted as long as it did I think was because of the captive audience. It was on Sunday afternoons when nothing but sports, church, and infomercials were on. Good ratings strategy.

CHCH also did "The Waterville Gang" - a puppet show featuring underwater creatures. I can't honestly tell you much about it as the plots were difficult to understand because the sound was awful and the puppets dialogue was hard to decipher. It also ran for years, but I don't entirely know who watched it, nor why it’s stuck in my subconscious seemingly forever.

But the most successful kid's show out of CHCH was Billy Van's now legendary "Hilarious House of Frightenstein."  "Frightenstein" was probably one of the strangest and most wonderful productions ever made for children's television.  Billy Van played the Count who, week after week, tried to get his "monster" going with the help of the lovable and bumbling Igor.  Other segments included The Oracle, Grizelda The Ghastly Gourmet, The Wolfman, Bwanna Clyde Batty, The Librarian, and Dr. Van Pet, also all played by Van, as well as various other sketches.  Strangest of all though was the shows creepy narrator which was played by none other then horror legend Vincent Price himself!  One must wonder how the hell they roped Price into doing this production.  The show was quirky and off beat and has a cult following to this day.  Furthermore, it could often be down right scary as hell.  I remember being scared silly during Price's closing speech - "The castle lights are growing dim, there's no-one left but me, and him. When next we meet in Frankenstone, don't come alone."  Brrrrrrrrr.........

Now, if you went further north to Barrie, Ontario kids were subjected to the "Oopsy Daisy the Clown Show".  I have little if no recollections of this one at all. Oopsy Daisy held no appeal to me. I don't like clowns. However, I think it was far more of the same - crafts, art, stories, and puppets. After Oopsy's show folded he apparently did a magic show at the Santa's Village theme park in Bracebridge, Ontario. Another girl I went to university with worked at Santa's Village one summer and said that Oopsy Daisy was a foul mouthed, chain smoking letch in real life. This doesn't surprise me. It’s actually rather stereotypical - isn't it?

The most successful independent Ontario kid shows from the 80's was produced out of CJOH in Ottawa. One was the now legendary "You Can't Do This on Television". It was so popular that it was actually picked up by Nickelodeon in the US and was a huge hit south of the border. The show was actually rather imaginative and off beat, and played out kind of like "Laugh In". Cynical Moose and dippy Lisa hosted an anthology show produced by the greedy and money grubbing Ross (the only adult on the show) and different sketches were played out. The real gimmick was if any of the cast members at any point said the phrase "I Don't Know," green paint dropped from the ceiling on to their head - which was termed being slimed. The show, as I remember it, was really genuinely funny and it’s too bad it’s not in repeats somewhere. And legend has it that Alanis Morrsette got her start on the show. I don't remember her specifically but it might indeed be true.

The final show I recall from these early days of Ontario children's programming was probably the most expensive and ambitious, but possibly the lamest and the one I wish I could forget. Out of Toronto was Global television's morning travesty "Size Small". Size Small was actually originally filmed out of Saskatoon at CKND TV, but was imported to Toronto.  The concept was that it was aimed towards kids that were no longer babies but not yet older kids (the theme went, I believe, "Size Small, not too tall, you’re growing up everyday" - or something like that). Hosted by the creepy Miss Helen and the sure to be future thug Oliver Sudden, Size Small was more sketches, more songs, and tons of puppets. It stank of sugary sweetness. The lamest was this guy in a record suit that, every episode, bounced badly up and down to bad music and tapped wooden spoons to the beat. Miss Helen, in a voice over, encouraged kids to get their wooden spoons too and join in because everybody knows that kids love to tap wooden spoons to canned music. Then, at the end of the episode, as the cast said goodbye, Miss Helen blew you all a kiss. I can't express how creepy this woman was. She cut her hair like Princess Diana and wore a lot of makeup and spoke in a whisper. Ug! But what made "Size Small" a giant disaster was that they tried to market it. Spawning two spin offs (Size Small Island and Size Small Country) they had toys, records, videos, clothing, and junk. Funny thing is, it folded really fast and it’s so obscure now that I can I find almost nothing about it on a Google search for the exception of posts by people trying to remember what the hell it was and why does it haunt them so.

Now, they still make kids shows these days. They still make cheap ones too. However, they aren't really quite the same. The real charm to these cheap relics was that they were regional. Today television stations have either abandoned kids shows, figuring that kids find them on the specialty channels anyhow (which is true and actually a wise business decision) or they buy them from the specialty stations that make them (YTV for instance). However, if you remember these creepy and odd little shows you should cherish those memories. It’s doubtful the tapes of those shows exist anymore. It’s doubtful you'll ever see them again and you can bet they'll ever end up on DVD. It was a unique time in Canadian television and your memories are the only record of them existing.

(POP CULTURE ADDICT UPDATE:  The first season of "You Can’t Do That on Television" was released on DVD in December of 2005.  I took a look at the DVD and the series has defiantly lasted the test of time.  I seriously suggest you take a look.  Furthermore, in January 2006 the "Hilarious House of Frightenstein" went back into reruns on the "Drive-In Classics" channel, airing at 6:30 pm, for future generations of Canadian kids to enjoy.    At the end of 2006 Frightenstein was also released on DVD, and is also readily available on YouTube.  I also want to point out two web-sites for those who want more information on two of these shows.  Check out http://www.frightenstein.com for the most complete information of the Hilarious House of Frightenstein available anywhere.  Another interesting site to check out is http://www.staffannouncer.com/unclebobby.htm for tons of information, pictures, and sound clips from "The Uncle Bobby Show."  Of most interest is a November 2005 phone interview between Steve Chicone and Uncle Bobby Ash.  Finally, when in Kingston make sure to buy pizza from Bill "Harrigan" Daley at GodFatha Pizza 753 Bayridge Drive, (613)-384-6444).